Mini star ejects mega flares

October 1, 2014 5:53 PM

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"This system is poorly studied because it wasn't on our watch list of stars capable of producing large flares," said Rachel Osten.

Astronomers know this because NASA's Swift satellite recently spotted a series of massive solar flares erupting from one of the two dim red dwarfs, each measuring about a third of the sun's mass and size. The hottest of the flares was estimated to be roughly 10,000 times more powerful than the large...